“Yeah, but year after year of this shit. How can you take it?”
Mora’s eyes dropped to the statue on the desk.
“I’m provided for. Don’t worry about me.” He waited another beat and said, “I’ve got no family. No wife anymore. Who’s going to complain about what I do, anyway?”
Bosch knew from their work on the task force that Mora had volunteered for the B squad, to work nights, because his wife had just left him. He had told Bosch that he found it hardest to get through the nights. Bosch now wondered if Mora’s ex-wife was blonde and, if she was, what it would mean.
“Look, Ray, I’ve been thinking the same things, about this follower. And she fits, you know? Gallery. The three vics and the survivor were all blondes. Church wasn’t choosey but the follower apparently is.”
“Hey, you’re right,” Mora said, looking at the photo of Gallery. “I hadn’t thought about that.”
“Anyway, this four-year-old tip is as good a place to start as any. There also might be other women, other victims. What’ve you got going?”
Mora smiled and said, “Harry, doesn’t matter what I got going. It’s dogshit compared to this. I gotta vacation next week but I don’t leave till Monday. Till then, I’m on it.”
“You mentioned the adult association. Is that-”
“Adult Film Association, yeah. It’s run out of a lawyer’s office in Sherman Oaks.”
“Yeah, you tight with anybody there?”
“I know the chief counsel. He’s interested in keeping the biz clean, so he’s a cooperative individual.”
“Can you talk to him, ask around, try to find out if anybody else dropped out like Gallery? They’d have to be blonde and built.”
“You want to know how many other victims we might have.”
“That’s right.”
“I’ll get on it.”
“What about the agents and the performers guild?”
Bosch nodded at the calendar with Delta Bush on it.
“I’ll hit them, too. Two agents handle ninety percent of the casting in this business. They’d be the place to start.”
“What about outcall? Do all of the women do it?”
“Not the top ranks of performers. But the ones below that, yeah, they pretty much go the outcall route. See, the top performers, they spend ten percent of the time making movies and the rest out on the road dancing. They go from strip club to strip club, make a lot of money. They can make a hundred grand a year dancing. Most people think they’re getting a bundle to do the nasty on video. That’s wrong. It’s the dancing. Then if you go below that level, to the performers either going up or coming down, they’re the ones you find doing outcall work in addition to the movies and the dancing. A lot of money there, too. These chicks will pull down a grand a night for outcall work.”
“Do they work with pimps, what?”
“Yeah, some got management but it’s not a requirement. It’s not like the street, where a girl needs her pimp to protect her from the bad johns and other whores. In outcall, all you need is an answering service. Chick puts her ad and her picture in the X press and the calls come in. Most have rules. They won’t go to anybody’s house, strictly hotel work. They can control the class of clientele they keep by the expense of the hotel. Good way to keep the riff-raff out.”
Bosch thought about Rebecca Kaminski and how she had gone to the Hyatt on Sunset. A nice place, but the riff-raff got in.
Apparently thinking the same thing, Mora said, “It doesn’t always work, though.”
“Obviously.”
“So, I’ll see what I can come up with, okay? But off the top of my head, I don’t think there will be many. If there was a bunch of women doing the sudden and permanent disappearing act like Gallery did, I think I would’ve gotten wind of it.”
“You got my beeper number?”
Mora wrote it down and Bosch headed out of the office.
He was heading across the lobby past the front desk when the pager on his belt sounded. He checked the number and saw it was a 485 exchange. He assumed Mora had forgotten to tell him something. He took the stairs back up to the second floor and ducked back into the Ad-Vice squad room.
Mora was there, holding the photo of Gallery and staring at it in a contemplative manner. He looked up then and saw Bosch.
“Did you just beep me?”
“Me? No.”
“Oh, I just thought you were trying to catch me before I left. I’m gonna use one of the phones.”
“You’re welcome to ’em, Harry.”
Bosch walked to an empty desk and dialed the number from the pager. He saw Mora slide the photo into the file. He put the file into a briefcase that was on the floor next to his chair.
A male voice answered the call after two rings.
“Chief Irvin Irving’s office, this is Lieutenant Felder, how can I help you?”
19
As with all three of the department’s assistant chiefs, Irving had his own private conference room at Parker Center. It was furnished with a large, round, Formica-topped table and six chairs, a potted plant and a counter that ran along the rear wall. There were no windows. The room could be entered through a door from Irving’s adjutant’s office or from the sixth floor’s main hallway. Bosch was the last one to arrive at the summit meeting called by Irving, taking the last chair. In the others sat the assistant chief, followed counterclockwise by Edgar and three men from Robbery-Homicide Division. Two of them Bosch knew, detectives Frankie Sheehan and Mike Opelt. They had also been attached to the Dollmaker task force four years earlier.
The third man from RHD Bosch knew by name and reputation only. Lieutenant Hans Rollenberger. He had been promoted to RHD sometime after Bosch had been demoted out of it. But friends like Sheehan kept Bosch informed. They told him Rollenberger was another cookie-cutter bureaucrat who avoided controversial and career-threatening decisions the way people avoid panhandlers on the sidewalk, pretending not to see or hear them. He was a climber and, therefore, he couldn’t be trusted. In RHD, the troops already referred to him as “Hans Off,” because that was the kind of commander he was. Morale in RHD, the unit every detective in the police department aspired to, was probably the lowest since the day the Rodney King video hit the TV.
“Sit down, Detective Bosch,” Irving said cordially. “I think you know everybody.”
Before Bosch could answer, Rollenberger sprang from his chair and offered his hand.
“Lieutenant Hans Rollenberger.”
Bosch shook it, then they both sat down. Bosch noticed a large stack of files at the center of the table and immediately recognized them as the Dollmaker task force case files. The murder books Bosch had were his own personal files. What was piled on the table was the entire main file, probably pulled out of the archives warehouse.
“We’re sitting down to see what we can do about this problem that’s come up with the Dollmaker case,” Irving said. “I have-as Detective Edgar has probably told you, I am swinging this case over to RHD. I am prepared to have Lieutenant Rollenberger put as many people on it as needed. I have also arranged for
